NHS volunteers data collection: technical guidance

Health and care volunteers form an essential part of the community of support, complementing the work of paid staff, who ensure and support the best experience and outcomes for people in need of health or care support and their visitors. Health and care volunteers are organised by the NHS, public and voluntary sector partners and community groups to deliver individual or collective actions. Volunteers help the organisations they volunteer for to build and harness social capital, improving the health and wellbeing of the population served. We know that having a diverse workforce, including volunteers, will enable us to provide better care for our diverse patient groups and reduce inequalities.¹

Volunteering can also lead to employment opportunities. As the fifth biggest employer in the world, employing 1.4 million people, the NHS is in a pivotal position to lead the way in the employment in England. Drawing on and welcoming a rich and diverse community of volunteers supports and enables equality of opportunity.

The establishment of Integrated Care Boards presents an opportunity to harness the potential of volunteers within a system.

The data collection regarding NHS Volunteers was introduced as a mandatory all for trusts²in April 2024, with the first return due July 2024 for the previous quarters data. It is a collection of metrics that aim to understand the number of volunteers, the number of hours volunteers contribute and equalities data about those volunteers that aligns with workforce data. Data is required on a quarterly basis for each of the metrics.

Trusts, integrated care boards (ICBs) and national healthcare organisations (also known as arm’s length bodies or ALBs) can use the published data to:

• establish a standard dataset of information regarding the number, composition and contribution of volunteers to better assess performance and enable improvements and sharing of good practice.
• monitor and tailor recruitment activities to support resilience and ensure volunteers are representative of communities served.
• understand volunteer numbers and flux at a system level to support decision making, including redeployment and managing pressures (including winter pressures)
• provide insight into trusts’ volunteer workforce capacity. ³
• demonstrate they are meeting duties under the Equality Act 2010, the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) and the Specific Equality Duties (SEDs) as well as contribute to the new Health Inequality Duty and are avoiding unlawful discrimination in the treatment of volunteers⁴

This guidance contains information that will support those tasked with collecting and reporting data regarding NHS Volunteers.

It will be particularly useful to volunteer service managers, equality leads and workforce leads.

This technical guidance will be useful to organisation chief executives, senior management teams and boards who hold local responsibility for ensuring compliance with mandatory data collections and responsibility and accountability to meet obligations under the Equality Act 2010, the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) and the Specific Equality Duties (SEDs) as well as delivery of the NHS Long Term Plan and Long Term Workforce Plan.

The collection is mandated by virtue of the Workforce Information Directions under s254 of the HSCA 2012. NHS England will issue a Data Provision Notice, under section 259 of the Health and Social Care 2012 to require data submission, this places a legal obligation on submitters to provide the data in accordance with the DPN. This data may be shared under s261(1), (1A) and s261(a) of the 2012 Act as the data must also be published under s260 of the 2012 Act.